Archives for December, 2008

My last Science Progress column of the year answers the critics of John Holdren, who strike me as being pretty off base. In particular, I explain that Holdren is not some ideologue who wants to use climate policies to wreck the economy; that an ancient bet he and Paul Ehrlich made against Julian Simon (and…

New Year 2009 faces a troubled economy, international unrest, and a changing planet, but also ushers in the new presidential administration with opportunities to set better policies that may yet alter the path we’re on… What are readers’ greatest hopes for 2009?

The latest publication of Issues In Science And Technology features an article I co-authored with ScienceDebate CEO Shawn Lawrence Otto. We discuss building the ScienceDebate2008 initiative, lessons from the election, and what’s needed to create an environment where the public’s understanding and appreciation of science policy will make scientists critical in the political process. Here’s…

Every week or so, someone asks yours truly to weigh in on women in science. I have. Including a couple of times here. But like Britney’s career, the subject keeps making a comeback… How do we break through that glass ceiling, defy expectations, and succeed in a man’s world? Now more than ever, it seems…

Sure I’m concerned over Bush’s last stand against the environment, but this piece from the Environmental News Network is, simply well… you decide: In a few hundred thousand years, after all weather effects of 21st century climate change have disappeared from the earth’s surface, after our quietly smoldering nuclear waste has been extinguished, two destructive…

About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large…

Round the outer ring are shown the 23 chromosomes of the human genome. The lines in blue, in the third ring, show internal rearrangements, in which a stretch of DNA has been moved from one site to another within the same chromosome. The red lines, in the bull’s eye, designate switches of DNA from one…

Well here we go….dutifully linking Bora, Brian, Isis, Laden…but excuse me, hasn’t this debate happened before? And has it resulted in anything other than sound and fury? Sheril and I have a long discussion of the science journalism/science communication problem in Unscientific America. I don’t want to steal our thunder here, but suffice it to…